I was thinking about barter in the Wasted West the other day, and it occurred to me that roleplaying it might be a bit difficult. When you're buying a pistol from a merchant, what do you think he'd say? He can't really say "That'll be a 150 dollars" since money has no value anymore, and metagaming it like "You haggle for a moment and he acccepts your offer of salvage worth of 150 dollars" doesn't sound good either.

In my games players had to describe what items they used as "change". It varied from candy and plant seeds to spare parts and tools. So we used to say:

"I'll change this bag of beans, three music CDs and a working RAM stick for a gun".
"Beans and music are okay, but no one here has a working computer! Change the RAM for that fancy jewlery you wear and we have a deal"

I always used a bullet based economy for the Wasted West. Anyone that has anything worth trading is either going to have or want bullets/shotgun shells. They're relatively portable and resistant to harsh conditions. They also gave the players a good idea how valuable bullets were after the bombs fell. They knew they weren't going to just find crates of them, and since this was also their spending cash even the richest brainer wasn't about to go full-auto with a assault shotgun unless they were really in trouble. I also found it cut down on bookkeeping by combining the money and ammo.

And it gives new meaning to, "trading bullets."

I just went with the cost of bullets in the book as the currency. It was something like this:

$1 for small caliber
$2-3 for large caliber
$5 for shotgun shells
$10 for a pistol magazine full/Armor Piercing
$up to 50 for special ammo types/sizes

Depends on the group. My own group is still a little upset that they now have to take calibers and bullets into consideration rather than keeping them abstract. (I'm the only gun nut in the group.). My old group didn't have that problem, and usually handled the haggling "Issue" by attributing a few items to a set price and using those frequently (Typically, this was food and bullets, with a roll of toilet paper being the "$100 Bill".).

Some players would love the "Give-And-Take" of a bartering session over stuff, others just will go, "Give me the money/caps/bullets/fish, whatever."

Tailor to your group so everyone has the most fun.

"Grab a wackin' stick, boy! Time to learn these here undead some manners!" - Percy Spencer, to his Son, Kevin.

The "just call it trade goods" thing never sat right with me. I like how it's done in Reloaded, where you can go into your cash to directly and retroactively "find" a piece of equipment. This deals with commerce both directly and indirectly, where the Marshal can ask for a specific item as trade, and the player can then "find" something from their cash pool in equivalent value and barter with that.

28/12/09 Scooter just bought a Deadlands book... In a Japanese Gaming store... And the clerk knew what it was. Awesome.

Yeah, I've been testing the system out in-game, and it seems to work out. I'll mention some stuff the PCs get in trade, like "He agrees to your deal, giving you a can of shaving foam, a pocket mirror and some matches." It doesn't matter exactly how much stuff the players are carrying. Some things can be really valuable in the Wasted West, even though they're small.

And if the players go "Hey, I got that mirror from that merchant", I can just make them roll to find in in their bags.